"Blackout Writings" A Compilation of Freewrites

in #freewrite5 years ago (edited)


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As some of you may know, since last thursday, Venezuela suffered a national blackout that left about 99% of the country without electricity for close to 100 hours (about 4 days), after which the electric power came back, but unstable, not staying ok until yesterday, and at least for me, internet conection didn't came back until this very morning.

Why am I telling this?, well, since 2019 started, I promised myself that I would write the @freewritehouse star initiative (the appropiately named "freewrite") as daily as it usually came, but without electricity or internet, I couldn't do that for a week. But thanks to a little bit of mobile data and a friendly neighboor who improvised a gadget to charge our phones using his truck, I managed to read the daily prompts, and write them on pen and paper to distract myself from the heat and the huge amounts of forcefully delayed work I had acumulating. I didn't post anything because my phone's screen is tiny, and it would have been a nightmare to use html and markdown on it, also, I had very little data.

As such, here there are the freewrites from friday 8 (504), to wednesday 13 (509), no link to the prompt post because well, I'm treating this as a compilation rather that and answer to those individual post. I hope they are enoyable.

Friday 08, Prompt 504: “Jiterry”

He had always been smart and quite curious, just not very daring, and as such, in his town there weren’t many stories about him doing something worth mentioning, apart from the few basic spells he managed to make. He was just the son of the town’s doctor and teacher, the boy who always carried a book around and to whom you could always ask some random fact about any random stuff and receive a correct answer. But this time he had something in mind, this time the book was more advanced than usual.

He sat in front of an old tree, big and with a thick bark, just a few leaves left. It was said that hundredths of years ago this tree gave shadow and rest to the Legendary Hero Sienom Vol during his travels, and if that was true, it probably was the only being still living that had direct contact with the man, other than the High Druids of Whitehorn. He doubly and triple checked the procedure, everything was fine, from the runes around the tree, the strategically placed mounds of metallic dust and the Chestnut Oil lamp burning in front of him. Just one thing left to do.

The thin blade got close to his left hand, the right one jittery until the very moment the edge cut through the first layer of skin, and the some more until blood started coming out. Wincing in pain, the boy let some drops fall right into the Ignition Rune. From there, each and every marking on the floor lightened up, and the acute smell of the metal dust formed tendrils of smoke that mixed with the aroma of the chestnut oil, and then surrounded the old tree before concentrating in the shape of a face right in front of him. The smoke was absorbed but the face stayed, and after a tense second, the eyes and the mouth opened, and the plant asked: “who are you boy?, I was sleeping so well before being bothered…”.



Saturday 09, “Marguerite, A Weekend Freewrite”

Spring rolled around, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t been home in two years. Everything looked the same, but this was the kind of place where change happened slowly, so it wasn’t a surprise. The yellow leaves of our regional symbol crowned the top of the trees that populated the townsquare where I was reunited with my old playmates, boys and girls proud of their humble origin, but also eager to know more about the life in the capital, and about why I had such heavy bags under my eyes.

I said because of heavy studying, which frequently also consumed the hours after sundown, but they had their own explanation in mind: the famous nightlife of Lyss, and the many bedsheet adventures a person with coin and/or charm could have. I tried to negate that, but my blushing cheeks invalidated any arguments, so they pried and pried, interested in knowing if I finally “popped my cherry”. It seems that the still didn’t know anything about Sarah and I, and it was better that way; also, I did have a brothel story I could tell.

If I get into bed with you guys, I lose my clients”, she had told us, the woman with long and curly red hair the shade of hot copper, with eyes as icy as a white dragon’s heart, but the loveliest voice and demeanor possible, at least for those who didn’t make her mad. Marguerite was the star of “Skyward Manor”, the most luxurious pleasure house in the capital, and not-so-secret outlet for leisure spending and the ruin of our most humble Bards. She was beautiful, smart, a pleasant company and if the boasting of some upperclassmen was true, blessed by the Goddess of Love Herself, and even when on her free time, she liked to chat with anyone, including random academy students like the group I was with.

They may had been too insistent on a discount, so her comment wasn’t as mean as it could, but even then she apologized and explained, after looking around, for some reason. Skyward Manor was a complex business, based, between other things, on reputation and the jealousy of patrons. “Some of them, as nice as they may act, think of the girls in the manor as just trophies, to be abandoned if they ever associate with people of lesser category than them”, hard truth, but something to be expected. Nevertheless, in her eyes I could see something more, and I definitely stared too much because she caught me looking and winked at me.

Was that everything?” my childhood friends asked, sounding disappointed, and I said yes. But that wasn’t all, while they started gossiping again about future marriages, my mind went back towards Marguerite, and the note she somehow left inside my bag, “In the catacombs by the Rosewood District, entering trough a trapdoor in the abandoned theater, far back in the tunnel, say what I drank today three times. See you there

That night had many things going on, and between other things, I learned about the true complexity of Skyward Manor’s business, and the bindings that kept Marguerite and other girls tied to it, under the watchful eye of shady people that mixed Old Magic with basic instincts to accumulate power.



Sunday 10, Prompt 506: “Meditate”

A veil of darkness is well received this time, because it makes room for the solitude needed to talk with oneself. A conversation like this was needed, the master told her disciple, it was the first step in the young elf’s chosen path, and she will have to repeat it many times in the future, of that the white haired woman was sure.

Now, no distractions, no incense or calming music other than an almost absolute silence that let Caelynn hear her own breathing, feel her heartbeats in the pulsing of the veins in her neck. No, she was still too nervous, she needed the stillness of that poem’s pond before the frog jumped in, because the answers would only come after she was a place that invited them in.

Breath. Breath Caelynn. She calmed herself enough to not feel the blackness beyond her eyelids, just the one inside them. Time didn’t exist, she breathed. Space didn’t exist, she breathed. Her body started to feel light, and the darkness around little by little dissipated into a pristine white void, no up or down, left or right, but she felt fine, at peace. A silhouette appeared in front of her. The frog jumped into the pond, she could ask her doubts away.



Monday 11, Prompt 507: “Hunger”

They were walking the streets of yet another city of that sun-beaten country. People looked at them warily, with their sunken eyes and thin body frames giving away the general misery of living in a tropical land infested with the winds of a dying revolution that tried to change things for the better. Few people, mostly sick or injured ones, with the healthy young and adults joining the rebellion, and the rest running away to where they thought they were safe.

But they were never quite safe, Fabricia knew that, war reached to them either directly or trough cuts in food and water supplies, because even the innocents had to pay, all to keep resources away from the rebels and in the hands of the kindom’s soldiers, including the band of mercenaries she belonged to, the Raging Drakes.

This time they weren’t ordered to kill, they were just passing through, but in the eyes of her companions, she could see the barely contained bloodlust, a kind of hunger so different that the one who made happy children into bony specters walking the streets, searching for anything to desperately put into their mouths. Was this fair?, she knew it wasn’t, but since when was the world always fair?, she had to block her mind of this, block her soul from this, and keep walking, and hope that all would be over soon.



Tuesday 12, Prompt 508: “Beads”

Everything was blurry, but he kept going forward, the walls were made of stone, that much he could tell, but not much more. How he came here he couldn’t tell, but staying wasn’t an option, there was something to reach at the end of the hallway, and there was something to run away from.

Fast, faster because a feeling of dread was eating him away, and ghostly images of blades and a symbol chased him from behind every corner he passed. Sweat in his forehead and a curse for every little cobblestone that threatened to make him fall. Ahead, something was shining, from beyond where the hallway ended.

He reached an open space, with an elevated altar of shorts in the back. He still heard the ghostly threat getting close, but in front of him, four things made him feel safe, complete. Two pairs of floating beads of light, a couple green and a couple purple went right towards him, towards his eyes.

He woke up. No random nightmare, he knew. The symbol that chased, those colors that entered him, he hoped to decipher before it was too late.



Wednesday 13, Prompt 509: “Pound Cake"

He craved it, he need it. For as much variety and deliciousness as the Academy’s buffet had, there was one thing that it lacked, and it was just the thing that Sebastian wanted more than anything else right now.

It was comfort made food, a cloud of simple deliciousness made with a pound of four ingredients: flour, whole eggs, butter and sugar. Just that, an oven and a potent hand to mix them well. He thought about it after failing an exam, but the biggest problem was: student dormitories didn’t have anything to cook a cake in, and the kitchen was closed to anyone who wasn’t part of the staff.

So, how did he manage to enter the magically protected place?, by bribing one of the working goblins in there of course!, it may have been just an assistant, but that greeny little person had a big curiosity for new things, especially in they meant eating something yummy. And so, a travel to the nearby market and some hours later, the human and the goblin were with their eyes glued to the closed and windowless door of the terracotta oven.

Is it done yet?” asked the green one in his high-pitched nasal voice. “Just a few more minutes” answered the young man. But while those couple of minutes passed, something not entirely good started to happen: the smell of burnt dough, and far more smoke than any firey misshapen dessert.

It was chaos them both opening the oven to see a monster of charred foodstuff getting bigger and bigger, as if inflated with anger. Did they managed to kill the oven beast?, did they saved themselves from the Headmistress punishment?, yes and kind-of, and they also learned the hard way that a certain vendor sold flour of things other than wheat.

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By golly, that must’ve been a nightmare for the modern age to not have electricity. Got to say sorry from my side of the World since my country, los EEUU, is boasting practically everyday how we are cap-sizing your country, how we got troops surrounding your borders ready to infiltrate (especially since SOUTHCOM, a military command of los EEUU y paises de Sudamérica, is there being very active), how we slap sanctions on your country which hinders economic growth (though we say it punishes the big bad leader) and even go so far as to say we will invade and install a Libya model! Don’t know about you, but Libya is not that great last time I checked. Anywho, if Maduro doesn’t act seriously to get the country moving, well someone will and it’ll probably be the many factions in the PSUV that will have his head for his incompetence. Or so I am told by some of my acquaintances. All I can say is hold out until the USA stops killing your country in every way my country so feels to do so...

Freewrite #504: since I like to do forma y filosofía in separate parts, I shall combine them here for all of them. La filosofía here seems very interesting, like a return to individualist (perhaps not) tales of magicry and the wonders of fantasy. Seems nice we get a boy who has yet to go through the motions, though I would say the same for a girl and all those that fit in between the two and beyond such. After all, it’s fantasy! (So of course no need to go after justifying them like we so easily accept the boy and his jitteries without a problem.) The form is much like in the case of a novella, and that’s a good thing concerning some novels of fantasy (and I have read them, most I was not surprised with how crap they were).

Freewrite #505: Now this is an interesting case, filosóficamente, that this is a contemporary story that has feminist-sympathies and some class-based+economic groundings. Can’t expect Marx+Engels nor Simone de Beauvoir (not like they wrote literature, though the way they communicated was always lovely) in such a limit of words, but I did like the mystery aspect that lies underneath. Especially hinted at with the italic-text, done well there.

Freewrite #506: This feels very much a, what I call, general-esque Eastern-style of worldview. Note I didn’t said filosofía nor actuality, and I used the word “a” here not “the” there. More for the reasons as it does borrow from Daoism/Taoism and Buddhism the idea of selflessness and the material world being only a mere collection of energy that Dialectically changes over time (aka no metaphysicality with objects). Yet it’s very much placed in the Western “Canon” of fictional creatures and it’s interesting seeing that interplay and dialogue between the two (in the background of course) is very interesting.

Freewrite #507: ah, finally, the one I wondered would come. It very much is a reflection of countries prolonged in civil wars in the modern era. For back then, though massive similarities, people barely could flee and everything people did was always in critical support of one side over another. Yet there’s a second splinter-off; while the past revolutions were centered in countries that could exist and actually transform themselves (being very behind, on purpose down by the Imperialist powers, yet realizing the need for actual authority to exorcise the demons out), this focuses in on the neo-colonial nations and how often it is to diversify economically even if we forget the revolutions was happening. The third splinter off from texts in those days and the ones nowadays is the very implication of mercenaries even being in the country to begin with! It certainly is a chilling story, to remind what revolutionaries of past knew what revolutions were: not a dinner table but a bloodied and horrifying event that is the epitome of class conflict between the working and ruling classes.

Freewrite #508: Ah, the symbolic dreams that do have weight in the person’s galaxy. Especially since real-life dreams do tell stories in what we unconsciously are aware off. So much I know isn’t directly referencing this, but modern stories with dreams have all been impacted by Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis that I must mention it here. Also the form is quite nice for a short story or a novella.

Freewrite #509: Ah! Poundcake, instantly love this story. Also, nice touch on the goblin coming along; like it when stories are inclusive of all types of people. But truly the simple æsthetic joy of the poundcake really was catching my eye and possibly how the narrator nearly wanted to sneer at the kid’s obsession over poundcakes. Just pure those two, especially the italic text being some wholesome~

So keep on writing and happy steeming!

Venezuela's situation is a very complex and complicated one, but without wanting to enter into political discussions (God know's I have enough in just my own neighborhood), I'll clarify a couple of points in regards to you comments on our situation, from the P.O.V. of an analitical journalist who has been trough all these things and has always tried to find an explanation beyond what his own opinions may lay on the matter:

1.-This isn't the United States fault, nor they have made it any worst; I can't say much about other countries since I don't know their inner workings and what happens behind their curtains, but here?, We've been screwed since a long time ago without any external help for that...
2.-The Sanctions that the US government imposses are directed towards our own government, not against the people, the problem?, when you have a corrupt government that tries to make each and every bussiness and company their own property, well, our economy bleeds because or socialist government makes us dependant on them instead of our own efforts...
3.-It is a mistake to think that Maduro or anyone of his accolites will ever act seriously, why?, it is not in their interest for the country to get better in any way, that is something that the last 20 years of socialist/chavista/madurista ideologies have shown, there are many dirty hands in here, and the speech about the good of people and its subsequent publicity are just mask for resentful and soul-dirty persons to keep themselves in positions of power...
4.-You have mentioned a lot of literary and philosophical works, so I'll do some of that: In Herman Hesse's work "Demian" it is said something along this lines: "for a bird to be born, it has to break its shell, the world it currently knows", not the exact words since it has been a couple of years since I read that, but it serves to illustrate my point: a pacific solution is always prefered, but too idealistic to think it will always happen; the many factions (not just from venezuela) interested in Maduro's or his people staying in power won't quetly accept defeat, and the violent people from here will fight back with firearms even the most pacific initiatives... so, as much as it pains me to say so: in a military/armed intervention is needed to get rid of each and every speck of chavist/madurista regime, then so be it, more than enough people have died in these last 20 years...

Now, on a lighter note: this is the kind of review I've been wanting since I started Steemit!, not that any of my works have been complex enough to need this kinds of references, but it is always nice to see someone pulling names like that and applying them to what I write. I truly apreciate the effort and time to write a small review for each of this works, you were pretty much on point with many of them, and when not, you gave me really good ideas for the story threads to keep going on.

Glad you clarified all those points. I've been posting about different issues in the last months, but it's not been easy to set the record straight.
As for your writing, I must congratulate you once for for your skills and acute sense of dramatic effect and the element of surprise. I'm glad you got a curie votefor this effort, which under the apagón, i lived it too, was quite an achievement.
As I tell those interested, there is so much we can offer this platform,but it is so fucking difficult to focus with so much crap going on around us.
You have the gift of storytelling and I hope some day soon you can shape and devellop all these drafts into a wonderful collection of tales.

It is always with great joy and happiness when i see users do more in what ever they do. Telling all those stories in a single blog really makes your piece a great one. I really enjoyed every piece in there and i enjoyed them.
Great work and keep the writing spirit up

If you enjoyed these ones, try cheking any of my other freewrites of 2019, they are all about the same world, and the same 3 characters, Thanks for reading!

I will check them out. And you are humbly welcome too

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Hi there @dranuvar!

I can truly relate on what it feelsnto have no electricity! And when there is none, it also means to internet..

I think it was when the Super Typhoon hits our country and concurred a huge damage. We almost didnt have electricity i think more or less than a month/s. Luckily the office has generator where we could all charge all our gadgets. But internet connection was very poor. I was barely online too.

It was such a nice idea to just actually write down your stories in a paper and retype them when you connection becomes available. In that way, your passion for writing wont die.

Keep on writing dear friend, dont let anything or anyone stop you from doing what you are born to do.

Cheers!❤

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A natural disaster has quite the aditional ammount of psychological damage, it must have been terrible... and well, I started writing all my stories in a smal diary-like notebook in late elementary school, I turned towards pc just for the convenience, but retaking that custom reminded me of something that a mentor of mine says all the time "a writes never stops working".

Yes it was.. a lot of lives and homes has been lost. And it was very sad and devastating. It still haunts us remembering it. But we have slowly moved on and building nee hopes.

  • "a writes never stops working"

I couldnt agree more. The mind of a writer always seeks and creates stories even when they sleeps.

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Hi dranuvar,

This post has been upvoted by the Curie community curation project and associated vote trail as exceptional content (human curated and reviewed). Have a great day :)

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this is interesting! i lived that disaster i was close to cry because it was really hard... i´m from barquisimeto and this city had about 110 hours without energy, water and few food! buuuuut the purpose of the regime is near

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